1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image data processing method using spatiotemporal locator information in which a position or movement of a spatiotemporal area in an image is determined.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, with a rapid development of an image processing technique, the handling of video image (a moving picture or still picture) as digital data has been generalized. By this digitization, a technique of efficiently compressing digital image data having a large data amount has been established. Moreover, with the development of network techniques such as Internet, satellite broadcast, and CATV, it has been possible to handle a large amount of image data, and an image database or a video on demand in which the image data is stored and from which the data is extracted and used to meet needs has come into a practical use stage. Additionally, an automatic monitor system from a remote site has also become major. When the image is to be used in this manner, there is a demand to recognize something in a screen, to conversely search for/extract an image including a desired object or to classify the image.
To meet this demand, the same assignee has already proposed a technique for efficiently describing a spatiotemporal locator information which is defined by a temporal trajectory of an object region over a plurality of frames (e.g., U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/612,497 and Ser. No. 09/633,231).
When the image is searched for, extracted and classified in accordance with a position or movement of the spatiotemporal area, it is necessary to determine whether or not the spatiotemporal area satisfies predetermined conditions with respect to all the frames with the object region existing therein. Therefore, when the number of frames of the spatiotemporal area is large or when the image is searched for based on a large number of spatiotemporal areas, there is a disadvantage that a calculation amount is large and efficiency is damaged.